Yonatan Rubin, Esq.

Founding member Yonatan Rubin received his law degree from the Rutgers University School of Law in Camden, New Jersey. Mr. Rubin also has a B.A. in economics and philosophy from Rutgers University. Mr. Rubin was previously a judicial law clerk for Judge Michael Brooke Fisher J.S.C. (Ret.) in the New Jersey Superior Court – Civil Division. Following his clerkship he worked at a New York City law firm focused on civil litigation.

Lorin Schneider, Esq.

Lorin Schneider founded the law firm of Schneider & Rubin, LLC, after several years at New York and New Jersey firms. His experience is primarily in civil litigation, with a focus on corporate and employment law. Lorin earned his B.A., with Highest Honors, from Rutgers University, and thereafter attended the Boston University School of Law as a Dean’s Scholar, where he graduated cum laude. Prior to establishing the law firm of Schneider & Rubin, LLC, in 2011, Lorin worked in commercial litigation at a New York City-based law firm, followed by general civil practice at a New Jersey firm. Lorin is admitted to practice in the states of New York and New Jersey.

About Our Firm

With the severe economic downturn and record-high unemployment of recent years, the number of unpaid interns in the job market has increased dramatically, as employers seek to increase productivity while decreasing costs. As it turns out, many unpaid internships are not legal. Recognizing the extensive need for legal representation in this area, the law firm of Schneider & Rubin, LLC, has become the first law firm in the United States exclusively focused on the issue of internship law.

While unpaid internships may have begun as a tool used by young people to gain the “real world” training one couldn’t receive from a formal education, today, they have become something else entirely.

Many unpaid internships have become nothing more than an employer’s ticket to a self-regenerating pool of free labor, enabling many businesses to increase profits by capitalizing on high levels of unemployment and desperation, particularly amongst young college students and graduates. Internships have provided for-profit employers an extremely cost effective alternative to hiring employees. It is estimated that in 2010, there were over 500,000 unpaid internships in the U.S., at a savings to businesses of over $2 billion annually. The cost savings businesses achieve through their use of unpaid interns continues to persist, even as debt from student loans in recent years overcame credit card debt as the number one source of debt in the US, making today’s graduates among the poorest members of society.

While the Department of Labor has explained that there are circumstances under which an internship in the “for-profit” private sector may be unpaid, those circumstances are strictly limited to where an internship program meets a number of stringent criteria. Unfortunately, many of today’s unpaid internships, more focused on extracting free work from an intern than on providing training, utterly fail to meet that standard. An employer’s failure to pay at least minimum wage for an internship that does not meet the legal standard of an unpaid internship entitles the intern to back-pay, plus an equal amount in damages, in addition to all attorney’s fees and costs.

The law firm of Schneider & Rubin, LLC, which practices in New York and New Jersey, hopes to be a key resource in addressing and redressing the widespread exploitation of interns that has become so prevalent in recent years.[/cs_text][/cs_column][/cs_row][/cs_section][/cs_content]